The Star Dwellers (21 page)

It’s weird, how none of it makes sense at
first, but then
all
of it seems to make sense. That he
always felt like my brother, always felt like my mom’s son. Us
playing, laughing, growing up together. The only part that doesn’t
feel right is that a guy who turned out as honest, caring, and
awesome as Roc should have a father like mine. I guess that gives
me hope that I’ll turn out all right in the end.

A nasty thought pops into my head and I
squeeze my eyes shut again, trying to make it go away. But it
won’t, not until I think about it, so I let it in slowly, playing
it around in my mind. Could my mom have known Roc was her stepson?
Is that why she always treated him the way she did? My initial
reaction is
No way, José
; my mom, the kind, loving person I
grew up with, would never do that, would never keep such a secret
from us. But then again, I never thought she would leave me alone
with my father, no matter how bad things got for her.

I pound my forehead with the heel of my hand.
I hate these thoughts. My anger should be turned on my father, not
on my mother. This is exactly what he wants—for me to doubt things,
to doubt my mother, to doubt myself. I’m playing right into his
hands. If my mother left, then she had a damn good reason, one that
was for the good of everyone involved, including me. She wouldn’t
do something like that, and she wouldn’t keep a secret from us,
like the one my father revealed today.

“She didn’t know,” I say out loud, opening my
eyes and trying out the words to see how they sound.

“Who didn’t?” Ben asks, his own eyes blinking
open.

I glance at him. I’m ready to talk about
it—at least as ready as I’ll ever be.

“My mother,” I say. I tell him everything,
the whole dark and twisted story. I even tell him how I felt, about
Roc’s reaction, about my father’s smug smile. By the end my vision
is blurry and my cheeks wet, and for a moment I’m embarrassed,
using the back of my hand to wipe away the tears, turning my face
away from Ben. Adele’s father. My judge. My jury.

“I don’t think she knew either. Your mother,”
Ben says.

“How can you say that? You don’t even know
her.” The words come out angrier than I planned and I feel like I’m
defending my mom, even though what he said was what I wanted to
hear.

“Call it a hunch,” Ben says, ignoring my
tone. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

He’s such a genuine guy that I can’t hold
onto my anger. “It’s okay. I suppose it’s better to know the truth,
even when it’s hard.”

“Those are mature words.”

My embarrassment waning, I turn back to face
him. His green eyes are shining with the moisture in them. While I
was protecting some silly requirement for manly pride, he was
crying, too, maybe not as much as me, but still. It makes me feel
better. He’s the leader of the Resistance, strong, a fighter, a
hero to his daughter. And becoming a hero to me. A true man. So if
I’m crying and he’s crying, then maybe I’m just a little bit like
him. For the first time since the meeting with my father, I have
hope again. That there’s good in the world. That evil can be
vanquished. And that I can help to do it.

“Let’s go find Roc,” he says.

W
ithout time to
consider my options, I close the distance to the rope ladder in
three long strides and leap onto it just before someone starts
pulling it up. My knuckles scrape against the stone block wall as
the rope starts to swing, but I force my fingers to hold on. I hear
Tawni shout below me but I don’t look down as I feel the earth
moving away from my feet.

Instead, I peer up and see a set of eyes
attached to a small body looking down at me. A boy, older than the
crying kid, but no more than Elsey’s age. He’s hanging onto the
rope ladder casually, using just his knees, as if he does it all
the time. And in his hands: a slingshot, which he’s already pulling
back.

I duck sharply, afraid to let go of the rope,
but making sure my eyes are protected.

Twang!
The slingshot sings and I feel
a sharp pain in my shoulder as the stone deflects hard off my
collar bone. “Arrr,” I growl, desperately fighting off the urge to
massage the wound with one of my hands. It hurts like hell, a
stinging pain that shoots through my nerves like a fire
cracker.

I grind my teeth so hard that my jaw starts
to hurt. But it takes my mind off my shoulder and I start to climb,
keeping my head down and starting with one hand up, then one foot;
the other hand—the other foot. All the while the rope is careening
side to side and being pulled upward by an unseen force. I repeat
my climbing cycle twice more and then risk another glance up.

Another kid, a girl this time, is staring
back at me, as if she was waiting for me to look up. Her hands hold
a tube to her lips like a straw. Not a straw—a pea shooter, like we
used to play with when we were kids. I hear a sharp exhalation of
breath and feel a pin-like prick on my cheek.

This time I can’t help but to raise a hand to
my injury, and I feel the warmth of fresh blood streaming down my
face.
That filthy, little…
I think, once more lowering my
head to climb, moving faster, less worried about falling, more
focused on getting my hands on the brats who are attacking me. A
few more stings pepper my body in various places—my ear, my neck,
the crown of my head—but I ignore the pain, determined to—

Thud!

Something heavy crashes into my skull and
sparkling fairy stars dance before my eyes. My head suddenly feels
heavy and my hands too tired to grip the rope. In the back of my
mind I know I’m pretty high up and that a fall could kill me, but
the thought of going to sleep just sounds so good.

Luckily, when my fingers relax on the rope, I
fall a little forward and my hands slips through the ladder,
pushing the rung sharply under my arms, burning my skin. The
sensation of falling loops wildly through my stomach, sending
warning signals to my brain. It snaps me out of my stupor and I
manage to grasp the rope once more.

I look up just as the foot comes down on my
head, trying for the knockout blow. Turning my head sharply to the
side, I avoid the worst of it as the dirty, shoeless foot glances
off my shoulder. Able to think once more, I grab the foot and pull
down hard.

“Ahhh!” a high voice yells as a small form
tumbles into my arm. It’s the girl with the pea shooter. The
kicker. I desperately cling to the ladder with my other arm, while
trying to hold onto the girl, who is kicking and thrashing wildly,
trying to unhinge herself from me, completely unconcerned with the
potential three-story drop below us.

“Stop squirming,” I snap. She doesn’t
listen—just wriggles even harder.

I hear a shout from above and look up to see
the boy with the slingshot, once more taking aim. He’s now dangling
outside the top-floor window, where I’m headed, as the ladder
continues to ascend.

“Don’t shoot or I’ll drop her!” I shout,
muscling the girl away from the rope so she’s hanging precariously
over empty space. Finally she stops fighting me as she realizes the
danger she’s in.

The boy’s eyes widen and I see doubt register
in his eyes as he lowers the slingshot slightly. If he shoots me
and I fall, she’s going with me. Although clearly he’s not afraid
of violence, perhaps he draws the line at bearing responsibility
for the death of a friend.

“What youse want?” he says.

The ladder rises another couple of feet. I
can almost touch him.

“Just to talk,” I say.
And wring your
little neck
.

He pulls back and helps to pull the ladder
over the windowsill. With a final grunt, I pull myself and the girl
into the window, crashing awkwardly to a crinkly floor below. I
feel my tiny hostage scramble away from me, scraping against the
papery floor with her fingernails.

For a moment I can’t see through the gloom,
but then a bright light is flashed in my eyes and I raise a hand to
shield them.

“Don’t move,” the boy says, wielding a
slingshot next to the light. His confidence is back.

“Yeah, don’t move,” the girl repeats, holding
the light.

“I’m not moving,” I say, considering my
options. I don’t particularly believe in hitting children, but for
these two I might make an exception. They put the
rats
in
brats
.

“Youse said youse wanna talk. What about?”
the boy asks.

“About you and your friends giving me my
stuff back, for starters.”

“Forget it,” the boy says. “Finders
keepers.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a real rule,” I
say.

“Yeah, it is,” the boy says. “And anyway, it
ain’t ours to give back. Not anymore.”

What is
that
supposed to mean? “Well,
then, whose exactly is it?”

“Mep’s. The Gimp. Only don’t call ’im the
Gimp—he don’t like that.”

I feel blood trickle off my scraped knuckles,
and my shoulders, neck, and head are throbbing in at least six
places.
Damn kids.

“Where can I find this Mep?”

“You cain’t. He finds youse.”

Screw talking—it’s not getting me anywhere. I
fake right, move left, and feel the air from the rock as it rips
past my head, missing me by mere centimeters. I crash into the boy,
rip the weapon from his hands, and swing around him to grab him
around the neck from behind.

The girl plays the flashlight on our faces
and I can tell she’s scared. I feel bad for a second, but then I
remember how she bashed me in the head with her heel. “Let him go!”
she cries.

“Only if you take me to Mep.”

She nods furiously. “Follow me. He’s just
down the hall.”

“He’s here?” I say incredulously. After all
the talk about how
He finds youse
, I thought for sure we’d
have to go to some secret hideout in the city.

The girl doesn’t answer; instead, she moves
away from me through the room, her feet crinkling on the floor,
which I now see is covered in old newspapers. In some spots the
newspapers are rolled up, and next to them are large squares of
paper, knit together to form sheets. I realize:
the kids are
sleeping here
.

I feel sick as I begin to put it all
together. These kids are orphans, living without adult supervision,
stealing to stay alive, sleeping on newspaper and reporting to some
gimp named Mep.

I hesitate for a second. Tawni’s still down
there by herself and she’s not exactly a fighter. And the Star
Realm’s not exactly a safe place, as we’re quickly discovering.
With the kid still in a headlock, I peek out the window. Tawni’s
looking up at me, her face masked with concern. “You all right?” I
shout.

She nods. “Should I get help?” she yells
back.

“No!” The last thing I want is Tawni
traipsing through the narrow subchapter streets by herself. “Stay
there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

We tramp across the sleeping quarters and out
of the room, passing through a short hallway with moldy, pockmarked
walls and a crumbling floor. At one point the boy tries to stamp on
my foot, but I just tighten my hold on his throat and his body goes
slack, forcing me to drag him with me.

The girl pauses at a closed door on her
right, takes a deep breath, and then knocks. There’s a muffled
sound and the door opens slowly.

She whispers something I can’t hear to
someone I can’t see.

“Enough with the mysterious bull crap,” I
say, pushing past the little girl and into the room. The room is
well-lit, with lanterns in each corner and at least a dozen
candles. It reminds me of a séance, like the ones Madame Sonia used
to hold that my mom wouldn’t let me go to. Three kids, wearing
tattered white tunics that are so dirty they appear gray, bar my
path with serious arms folded across puffed-out chests. “Move it if
you don’t want to get hurt.”

The kids look at each other, like they’re
unsure who to be more scared of—me, or this Mep character.

“Let her enter,” a remarkably high and whiny
voice says from behind them. They shrug and part in the middle,
allowing me to pass through them. I dump my “hostage” on the floor
and move forward. The kid immediately races out the door.
Little
wimp
, I think,
not so confident without your slingshot
.
I’m still clenching his rock-slinger in my hand.

Mep’s sitting on a big cushion in the center
of the room, surrounded by a half-dozen other kids, who almost look
like his worshippers, such is the meekness of their postures. He
would have been sitting cross-legged; that is, if he had any legs.
Instead, he is just sort of resting on his torso, the stumps of his
legs no more than half a foot long. I keep a straight face, but
inside I’m horrified. This poor orphaned boy is stuck in the crummy
Star Realm with no legs. It almost makes my time in the Pen look
like a vacation.

As I look at him closer, I see that despite
his tiny stature—due to his missing limbs—the boy is older than the
rest of the kids—perhaps fifteen. He gazes at me with curious brown
eyes that dance with questions.

“Why have you come to see Mep?” he asks.

“Why you are speaking in third person?” I
retort.

A hint of a smile crosses his face. “I’m
sorry, I’m used to speaking to children,” he says. “Why have you
come to see
me
?”

“Your thugs stole our packs,” I say, “and
when I chased them they shot rocks at me.” I don’t mention the
heel-in-the-head incident. I’ll save it for later if I need it.

“You shouldn’t have chased them,” he says,
like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“They stole my stuff.”

“Finders, keepers.”

“Yeah, rock-slinger boy already tried that on
me, but unless you can tell me the Tri-Realms law that states that,
I want my packs back.” I can’t believe I’m actually relying on
Tri-Realms law in my defense, which is the biggest bunch of BS
there is, but I can’t think of anything better to say, except maybe
Give them back now or I’ll sock you in the nose.